Picked a hands-on demo over a fancy presentation at a vendor summit last month

Had to choose between a polished slide deck from a big ERP vendor or a messy live demo from a smaller SaaS company in Portland. The live demo crashed twice, but the CEO actually jumped in to fix it himself which told me more about their team than any slide could. Has anyone else made a gut call like that that ended up changing how you pick partners?

3 comments

3 Comments

troy_owens1mo ago

The CEO jumping in to fix it himself is the part that sticks with me... that tells you way more about company culture than a perfect demo ever could. Kinda makes you wonder how many polished presentations are just smoke and mirrors.

webb.jordan1mo ago

Honestly @troy_owens, I think you're right about the culture part but polished presentations aren't always smoke and mirrors - sometimes they just mean the team actually prepped and rehearsed, which is its own kind of hard work too.

nora53521d ago

Oh man, @troy_owens that exact thing happened to a buddy of mine. He picked some no-name vendor over a big one cause their sales guy showed up in jeans and fixed a bug on the spot. Turned into his best partner ever.